


the space between seconds

by monsterbate



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 16:45:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4927306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monsterbate/pseuds/monsterbate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds—but I think of you always in those intervals.”<br/>(Salvador Plascencia, <i>The People of Paper</i>)</p><p>::</p><p>The requisite post-<i>Death Do Us Part</i> fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the space between seconds

The package is wrapped up in brown paper, tied up with string. In Phryne’s sprawling script is his name, underlined twice, with the word ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ inscribed boldly beneath it. 

Inside is another box wrapped in brown paper (also marked ‘CONFIDENTIAL’), as well as an envelope that smells discreetly of expensive French perfume. The letter is in her hand as well, and it says: 

> Jack— 
> 
> I’ve been called away unexpectedly, to England, to again fix what Father has broken. I should call on you properly to say goodbye but I don’t think I can bring myself to do so—fear of the not knowing, if I’m being horribly honest. Will you forgive me my cowardice?
> 
> I’ve sent this by way of Dot because of all the people in the world, Jack, it is only you I could entrust with its contents. 
> 
> Perhaps don’t open it in the station.
> 
> Phryne
> 
> PS Mr Butler has explicit instructions that you are always welcome. I do hope you’ll keep my Scotch from going to ruin in my absence. 
> 
> PPS If you’re at all curious: the answer is yes, you may.

The box is no larger than the palm of his hand; he wonders briefly what sort of mischief she could possibly have wrapped up so tidily. Still, the Phryne-ness of it is enough to keep him from opening it right then and there: he will wait until shift change when the station is quiet and he is alone. 

::

He dismisses Hugh twenty minutes early and throws the lock on his office door before retaking his seat. It seems right to open it here, in their space, rather than elsewhere. Even if it does go against her warnings. 

The paper falls away easily enough, and inside is a fold of tissue paper, wrapped around a—a roll of film. 

There is nothing else in the box: no associated negatives, no prints, no explanation. Just the roll of film, innocuous and mysterious. The second postscript on her letter suddenly falls into place and already he can see her curling smile, knowing he will, eventually, submit. 

He always does, when it comes to her.

::

He keeps the (yet undeveloped) film in the same drawer he keeps his other—mementos. The empty spider jar; the bottle of whiskey she’d bought for him; the dossier containing her mugshots. Its presence is a strange reminder that there is something that needs doing. 

Hugh and Dot have been tip-toeing around him, uncertain of how he’s taking Miss Fisher’s departure. He wishes he could reassure him that he is fine, but the truth is that he’s still not certain how he’s taking it. It doesn’t feel real, any of it: the frantic race to the airfield, the teasing certainty of her invitation, the hot press of her lips—it all seems a hazy, addled dream that he’ll wake from at any moment when Miss Fisher swans through his door. 

Except it has been three weeks and his office is empty and she is probably crossing Europe with a laugh and a wink and he’s still here. He should be going after her. He should be brave and bold and just the sort of man that would blunder across Europe for the pleasure of throwing himself at her feet. 

But Jack has never really been that sort of man—not in the War, not for Rosie, not even when it comes to Miss Fisher. He’s certain of two things: he is honest, and she is everything. 

(That and he couldn’t afford it, even if he—which he doesn’t. Because—it would be a mistake. Obviously.)

It’s enough to make him drink.

And worse, it’s enough to make him _think._

::

Two weeks later and the film has found its way into his jacket pocket. He finds himself patting it absently, reassured by the roundness of it when he’s feeling particularly adrift. What the film might contain is what keeps him adrift. 

He keeps pulling out the old file he started when he thought Miss Fisher was going to be a menace. Not that she isn’t a menace _now_ , but then it had been—he hadn’t liked her. Hadn’t liked her blasé disregard for tradition, for stoicism, for seriousness. 

Hadn’t liked that she was intelligent and beautiful and distracting. 

He keeps pulling out the old file and idly flipping through it, studying the black and white mugshots as if they hold the answer to the mystery in his pocket. The crumbling newspaper articles from solved cases; the notes on outrageously expensive paper inviting him over for a nightcap, for dinner, for an aperitif; the bits he can’t seem to part with. 

The pieces line up across his desk precisely, orderly, a clear case for something obvious. 

Jack tells himself he’s not a sentimental man. 

He also tells himself that he’s not going to develop the film. 

Jack, as it turns out, is not very good at lying to himself. 

:: 

There’s a telegram on his desk the next day: it’s short and to the point and he wonders if he’d be able to get away with leaving for the day at half eight in the morning to find a bar and a modicum of peace:

> NO MURDERS VERY DULL STOP  
>  DEVELOPED FILM YET

::

Three days later and he’s relatively certain he knows what he’s about in the darkroom. He’d considered asking one of the assistants to, well, assist, but it’s Phryne so God knows what might be captured on the blasted film. Pornography, heresy, obscenity—he’s imagined it all. 

And worse, the photographs are probably nothing more scandalous than snaps of Jane, or Mrs Collins, or Cec and Burt. She probably just wanted him to squirm, like she always does. 

But he’s not about to take that risk when they came from the woman who proudly has a nude portrait of herself in her bedroom. Who had given Collins a book that had been banned in over a hundred civilized countries. Who invited romantic overtures during murder investigations. 

He wishes, at the blind corners of the night, that he could find a way out of how he feels, how it feels to—that he could put it aside, at least for a moment. 

Can he continue to deny it? 

In the darkness, the roll of film is familiar in his hands as he opens the canister. He feels much as he did that day at the college, and again on the airfield, knowing there is no turning back: everything has been laid out, exposed. There can only be forward motion. 

He tries not to think about what his hands are doing, how the film feels, how there is this sense of guilty eagerness about this whole process. He should not, but he cannot help himself—isn’t that how this all works?

If he could rush to her side, would he? If she would have him, could he? 

He wonders, pinning up the negatives to dry, what kind of man he really is. 

::

They’re of her in her undergarments. Of course. 

Both doors are locked, the window shade drawn, and the prints laid out on his desk in chronologic order. 

And they’re of her in her blasted undergarments. 

It’s not that—he doesn’t—she’s so damned gorgeous it hurts, but then… He can’t stop himself from wondering when, and why, and where, and goddamn it, _for whom_? It’s the most raw he’s felt since Compton, when he realized she could put aside their—their whatever it was so easily.

Not that it should matter. Her attentions—however brief they might be—should be more than enough. He should revel in the fact that even though he had taken his time in approaching her, she had still responded, had any interest in him at all. 

And she hadn’t developed them, had packaged them up for him—had offered him her own silly overtures and her sly knowing eyes in the damp morning dew— 

Was it even possible that she’d been thinking of him? Standing there in silk and stockings and her blasted _skin, everywhere_ —all with her thoughts on DI Jack Robinson? 

The thought makes him giddy and afraid and guilty and eager. 

 

It was a fool’s dream, of course. A swampy, dangerous path that would take him to unstable ground. There could be nothing certain with her, and never would be because she wanted it that way, wanted nothing absolute. She would offer him skin and silk, and he hungered for it, but— 

Sometimes he found it hard to bear that she considered her body forfeit to pleasure, while her mind was kept locked away, out of reach. 

As if one without the other could ever be enough. 

It was almost comical, looking back at the course of their—partnership? How lucky he’d been, refusing her invitations to her bed almost offhandedly. Because it had afforded him the opportunity to see—all of it: her loyalty, her devotion, her nightmares, her ghosts, her triumphs, her joy, her adventure. All the artifacts of a woman he could not help but—

 _Goddamnit,_ he thought. 

The woman he loved.

::

His response is late, but it’s not because he struggled to find the right words. Rather, it’s because he, ah...didn’t know what to say.

> 3 MURDERS VERY DULL STOP  
>  YES STOP

::

The pictures are kept locked in his top drawer. The key is kept—he keeps the damned key in his damned pocket because he can’t bring himself to stop reaching for it, eager to remind himself what she had entrusted to him. 

Hugh is continuously interrupting, finding excuses to chat, with his chest swollen in that way freshly married men often have. He talks about Mrs Collins formally, distantly, as if Jack hasn’t sat at Miss Fisher’s kitchen table with her in his shirtsleeves a dozen times, taking tea and listening to the red-raggers argue about cards and gambling and other illegal things. 

It would be funny if not for the way those memories haunt him, now. How quickly everything had come apart: now Mrs Collins has her own house to keep, and Hugh’s eager to leave instead of eager to stay. Now Miss Fisher’s table is empty, the house silent, the family scattered.

He won’t let himself think on the house on the corner. 

::

Life goes on. It always does. 

He wakes, takes his coffee, goes to work, sits at his desk, waits. Gets a case, waits. Interviews suspects, fills out paperwork, waits. For what? For her, of course. 

Of course. 

Reaches for his desk drawer. Stops himself. Waits. Wants. 

::

> Dear Miss Fisher, (he writes)
> 
> It has been a month since we last met. I am writing to let you know that while I might like to complete your request, I have been quite busy. Now that the notorious lady detective has left Melbourne, the criminals have come out in full force.
> 
> My closure rates are still recovering from your interference, but I will soon be again the most feared detective in the city. You may eventually be able to catch up, upon your return.
> 
> Jack
> 
> PS I would ask the meaning of your parting gift but perhaps I do not want to know.

He drops it into the post, drunk, on a Thursday evening and tries not to remember how stilted and foolish and lovesick he sounds, writing to a woman half a world away. 

::

Dr McMillan stops by his office one afternoon, hands tucked inside the pockets of her coat. 

“Bit quiet around here, hmm?” she asks, leaning back against the door jamb. 

“Yes,” he says. 

“Some might say too quiet,” she continues. There’s a wry look to her that puts him on guard, if only because he knows that their friendship is entirely dependant on his standing with Miss Fisher. Dr McMillan would have no qualms about destroying him if Miss Fisher asked her to. He knows this. 

“It is,” he says. 

“She’ll come back, Detective. There’s no need to worry.”

His instinctive urge is to begin a cross-examination: How does she know this? What of her history with the honorable Miss Fisher makes her believe it? Has she ever mentioned him as being part of what keeps her in Melbourne? Or is her attachment for other reasons, other loyalties?

But the questions curdle on his tongue, and all he can do is nod at Dr McMillan. Nod and trust she would not give him false hope, not about this. 

She clucks, stepping further into the room. “If it helps any, she _told_ me she’d be back. Said she had unfinished business. I didn’t pry, as I didn’t particularly want to hear the sordid details.”

“Er,” he says. “Ah. I see.”

“Thought you ought to know, is all. Before you do something rash.”

“Thank you, Dr McMillan,” he says, voice muffled. 

“Call me Mac,” she answers with a wide smile. “We’re basically family at this point, in any case.”

::

The next telegram comes late in the day; Hugh knocks with a sheepish, uncertain smile. 

“Message for you, sir,” he says, and his tone tells him exactly who it is from. 

“Thank you,” Jack hears himself reply. “That will be all, Collins.”

> DONT TEASE GIVE DOT BEST STOP  
>  DEPARTURE DELAYED STOP  
>  EXPLAIN SOON STOP

His stomach clenches, hard and tight. It would be so easy to assume that this is how it ends: this is how she removes him from the field. He has foreseen it a hundred times or more, and the familiarity of it is enough to make him vaguely angry. 

But he has not spent the last years at her side for nothing. He knows she is careless but not cruel, unattached but not unloyal. If she says her return has been delayed, he will believe it to be for reasons that don’t boil down to avoidance or disinterest. 

He folds the telegram neatly and places it in the folder in his desk drawer. 

::

Another robbery, two suspicious deaths; a missing automobile; a cock fighting ring. He moves between the cases automatically, mechanically. Hugh follows, making notes and asking questions that never seem to be answered. 

It’s disconcerting to realize how the luster has gone out of his work when he’s not listening to Miss Fisher re-enumerate his evidence for him, solve his case for him, heckle him, amuse him, make him feel— 

The truth of it is that she makes him better. 

::

Two months, and he is numbed. Missing her has become a routine pain, one he nudges against daily. Her perfume has faded from the letters; he can’t quite recall the exact red of her lipstick; the tune she was humming the last time he saw her has gone. He wonders if she will melt away entirely before she returns before realizing how impossible that would be. The important things, those he will not forget. 

He sends no answering telegram, no pleas, no promises. He will do nothing except wait, and want. 

::

Mrs Collins stops by the station one day to drop off Hugh’s lunch, and ends up hovering awkwardly outside Jack’s door until he looks up from his case files.

“Mrs Collins. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Hello, Detective,” she finally says, voice soft but full of steel. “Miss Fisher wants to know why you aren’t responding to her telegrams.” She steps into his office more firmly, hands tight around her pocketbook. “She thinks you’ve changed your mind.”

“She asked you this?” he asks, and his voice is rough and full of questions. He wants to close away his vulnerabilities, make himself as steel-cored as Dot Collins, but he cannot seem to find a way to do so without forfeiting what he wants most. 

“Of course not,” and there is exasperation in her voice. “Miss Fisher would never be so—” she pauses, the word ‘ _obvious_ ’ hanging in the space between them, “—bold. But she keeps asking about the ‘big case’ you must be working on because, and I quote, ‘Jack never ignores courtesy unless there’s crime’.”

“Mrs Collins,” he says after a moment of shattering silence. “I don’t really—”

“Detective,” she cuts in, the steel red-hot and glowing, “I don’t care for excuses. Just respond to poor Miss Fisher before she does something drastic like land her plane in front of the police station.”

“Yes, Mrs Collins. Thank you.”

She waits, studying him, intent and solemn and eerily thorough, before giving a small, decisive nod. “I thought so. Have a good day. There’s extra biscuits in the basket for you; see that Hugh doesn’t eat them all.”

::

His outgoing telegram, draft seventeen:

> QUIET HERE STOP  
>  HOPE ALL IS WELL STOP

::

Their messages might have tangled in the wires, so soon does her response arrive. He tries to keep himself aloof, removed, but he cannot stop his hands from shaking as he tears into the envelope. 

> FATHER DELAYED STOP  
>  RETURNING TWENTIETH BY AIR STOP  
>  SAME TIME SAME PLACE STOP

::

He buys a new tie and ends up wearing one of his old ones. 

::

The last months have been moving towards this pinnacle, her plane a dot in the sky, her return a question he cannot answer. He loves her, this is fact; he wants her, this too is true. But he could not change her, could not ask her to be anything other than entirely herself. 

If she destroys him in the process—if he is not strong enough to withstand her—what will that say of him? Of her? Of them? 

He watches the flight circle, slow, drop lower and lower in the sky as she approaches. His stomach follows its path. He worries the brim of his hat between his hands, turning it and turning it, around and around.

The wheels touch down, the engine surges, and the plane is rolling past him. He can see nothing more of her than a black wing of hair against her cheek, the ruby slash of lipstick. 

When she throws herself out of the cockpit, he is already halfway to her; the flame of her presence is enough to burn away his hesitation. Her smile is almost shy, but she hurries to meet him, arms outflung. 

“Jack!” she calls, and he can hear the laughter, the wonder. “You came!”

“Of course I did, Miss Fisher,” and he is smiling like a fool even as she comes to a stop just before him.

“I wasn’t sure you would—you were awfully taciturn while I was away.”

“My apologies. I did not want you to—I did not want any obligation to force your hand.”

Her grin is a live wire, the shyness gone, as she takes a step forward. “That sounds very modern of you, Detective Inspector,” and her hands are already twisted in his lapels. “I had not realized I was dealing with such a forward-thinking man. One who develops private photographs and all.”

“I do try, Miss Fisher,” and there’s a moment where the playfulness is too much, too light, before he closes the space between them. “I would try for you, Phryne, in any case.”

“Oh, Jack,” she says, “Now _that’s_ a romantic overture if I ever heard one.”

He kisses her, and kisses her, and keeps kissing her until the sun is hot on his uncovered head (where had his hat gotten to?) and her lipstick is all but gone. And then he wraps her hand in his and leads her towards his car, eager to keep trying.


End file.
